


their mistake is they got old

by PenzyRome



Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, F/F, F/M, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Period-Typical Homophobia, Platonic Life Partners, Post-Canon, and its sad folks, mlm/wlw solidarity, the romantic pairings are sort of side but affect the story a lot, this is basically... all of katherines life after the strike, title from "watch what happens", you know that feeling when you cant remember life without someone else?? yeah.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 15:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16286945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenzyRome/pseuds/PenzyRome
Summary: Katherine Plumber, 17, had been so sure that she could stay the same, that she could stop the world, that she'd stay young forever.The world kept moving, though, no matter how hard she tried to stop it, and it forced her to move with it.





	their mistake is they got old

_"I find the thing with these revolving rides-- they're only fun because you know they're going to end."_

_\- "If I Had My Time Again", Groundhog Day_

 

The strike settled, and Katherine’s life changed forever. For a half a year, her life was better than anything else she’d ever experienced. She had a best friend in David Jacobs, a… well, friend, in Jack Kelly, a  _ something  _ in Sarah Jacobs that left her breathless, and a full battalion of newsies who greeted her with tipped hats and “Hey, Plumber!” and “Morning, Miss Kathy!” and cheeky smiles.

And six months later, it all started to fall apart. 

She knew that people aged out of selling papers, but she never quite remembered that so many of her friends were that close to their deadline. But when one by one, they started disappearing to work at the docks or moving out of New York with what little money they had or just vanishing, it was like a bucket of water was dumped on her head. 

The real crux, though, was right after David and Sarah turned 18, and Sarah knocked on Katherine’s door, cheeks flushed from the cold and happiness. Katherine thought, for a moment, of kissing her, but locked it back, far away, in the place where thoughts that she couldn’t have remained. Katherine was about to ask why Sarah was there so late at night before Sarah squealed and swept her up into a hug.

She pulled back, beaming. “I’m getting married!”

Katherine’s heart shattered in places that she previously hadn’t even thought could shatter. She painted on a smile and slapped Sarah in the arm and covered up every actual feeling until she caught David in the streets selling papers and hauled him into a back alleyway.

He read her in an instant. “Katherine, I swear to you, I would have told you if I knew there was someone.”

That hit her like a bullet. “She never told anyone?”

He shook his head. “She just met him a month or so ago, and he just proposed last night. If it makes you feel better, he seems kind, and he’s got money.”

She ignored that. “She’s marrying a man who she just met a month ago?”

David furrowed his eyebrows. “Did you skip the ‘kind’ and ‘money’ part?”

“But does she love him?”

The confused expression left his face. “We can’t afford to wait for her to find ‘the one’. Kath, people are questioning if I’m young enough to sell papers, I’m going to have to search for another job soon, Les doesn’t look as much like a little kid as he used to… This man has money, and they seem to care about each other. He’s what she-- what  _ we  _ need.”

Katherine looked at her boots. “She’s only eighteen.”

David sighed. “It isn’t that awful. He’ll make her happy and he’ll make money. This is just what happens.”

_ This is what happens. _

The ceremony was beautiful, except for the fact that every word spoken put another little crack in Katherine’s heart. David smiled and kissed his sister on the cheek and squeezed Katherine’s hand when she stood next to him. About halfway through the reception, Jack slid next to David and whispered something to him. David nodded with a soft smile and pressed a kiss to Katherine’s temple, following Jack like it was trained into his muscle memory.

Katherine looked around a party filled with people, either poor and kind or rich and cruel, and she didn’t know any other option than to follow them at a distance. They walked slowly to the edge of the ballroom and chatted for a while, and after a few minutes, Jack snatched two glasses of champagne and grabbed David’s tie.

Katherine could read a “Jack, what--” before Jack tugged and David followed him out of the building. 

She was very sure she was going to regret it when she tailed them, waving to Sarah, who wiggled her fingers in her direction before shrieking with laughter as her husband kissed her neck. Katherine snuck out, bunching her skirt in her fist as she followed a trail of David’s complaints and Jack laughing. They walked along for blocks before finally settling in an alleyway that Katherine peeked around the corner of to see them sitting on a bale of hay, pressed close together.

They were silent for a second before David said softly, “You look nice.”

Jack shrugged one shoulder. “I look alright. Denton’s jacket doesn’t fit quite right, but when does anything?” They both laughed and sobered. Jack turned to him and gave him a quiet once-over. “I think I missed you looking fancy.” David wrinkled his nose at him, and Jack held up one hand. “Don’t get me wrong, rough and tumble newsboy is a good look on you. But…” he looked around and placed a hesitant hand on David’s jacket sleeve. “Blue’s good too.”

“Jack,” David protested quietly, and Katherine ducked behind the wall.

“Yeah,” she heard Jack say, and looked again to see Jack’s head ducked. 

“Jack,” David said, stronger that time. Jack looked up, and Katherine felt her heart hurt for them. A cold wind prickled the back of her neck as she watched Jack look up at the sky.

“Nice ceremony. Chuppah was beautiful,” he said, smiling painstakingly.

Katherine peered at that smile through the almost-dark and felt realization wash over her like a cold wave. 

David reached out, his hand hovering in the few inches between them. “Jack, please don’t do this.”

Jack laughed bitterly. “What, you want me to pretend like I didn’t look at that wedding and hate it because I can’t have something like that with you?”

Katherine’s heart dropped into her stomach, and she should have left, she really should have, but she stayed.

David shook his head like he was trying to get the mere thought out of his head. “You can’t say that. You, you don’t love me. You think you do, but you’ll leave as soon as you find a pretty girl who you can be with without running from the law, and then you’ll vanish forever, and I can’t stand you vanishing, so really, sorry, you can’t love me, you don’t, and I don’t love you, so just stop it, stop saying you want to be with me and leaning in for kisses that are inevitably just going to break me--”

“Davey,” Jack said firmly, and David shook his head again, fiercer than before.

“You don’t love me, not the way you should, so please, just  _ go,” _ he took an angry gulp of champagne and winced like it burned, slapping away Jack’s hand. “Aren’t you  _ listening? _ Jack, I…” His voice faded out, and Katherine felt her nails dig into her palms.

She’d known, in a way. She was a reporter, she observed things, like the way David ducked his head when Jack slung an arm around his shoulders to praise his Pulitzer-related outbursts, or the way Jack seemed to have paint on his hands the exact shade of David’s eyes whenever he went over to Medda’s.

That didn’t stop her heart from breaking for their sakes, especially David’s. Jack Kelly fell in love like it was his job to do so, but she’d never heard David even ruminate over romance.

Poor David. That was going to make his life so much harder. She wished he could fall in love once a week and find a happy life with a wife and children and a stable job.

She wished they all could. She wished she could marry Darcy or Bill or another one of the rich about-to-be-men her father had forced upon her and be happy. She wished she could find each and every newsie someone who could make them happy without having to check behind their backs before kissing.

She could feel her hopes for David ever being happy-in-love-with-a-wife-and-kids slipping away as he shot one agonized look at the sky and then pulled Jack towards him to kiss him like it would kill him if he didn’t. 

She had learned a few years ago about the idea of indulgence of pain. When something hurt to the point that the only way the person suffering felt less pain was to take it head-on, and hope that it would go away.

As Katherine turned and left them in their bubble, she sincerely hoped that David would be able to close the wound Jack Kelly would inevitably leave in his life and his heart. Deep somewhere inside her, though, she knew he wouldn’t.

David Jacobs was her best friend, and Jack Kelly was the only person he would ever fall in love with, and he deserved so much better than that.

 

It was a few months before Katherine’s world permanently changed again.

There were tremors, a few newsies vanishing for dead-end jobs or something unknown, a few times that her father mentioned that she really should have been getting married by then, but nothing huge.

Throughout those few months, Sarah would tell gushing stories about her husband, and Katherine would smile through them, and David would show up late for dinners that Sarah had invited the two of them to, pulling up his collar to conceal bruises along his neck and collarbone. Sarah and Katherine would exchange looks, and Katherine would let Sarah think that she knew exactly what was going on.

She feared for David, she really did. He was careful, probably more so than he needed to be, but Jack wasn’t, not enough. Sometimes they would all be in Jacobi’s and Jack would sidle up next to David, whispering in his ear, and then in a few minutes, both of them would be gone, and it scared Katherine. It scared Katherine when Jack would practically flaunt his bruises and stand too close to David in the middle of busy sidewalks and make it too obvious when he said he had to go get something, then clear his throat obviously until David looked up.

Sarah, thankfully, was oblivious enough. She knew David-- she knew he was seeing someone, she knew something about him had changed, she knew he was in some relationship much different from the strict, traditional ones expected of them-- but Katherine was relieved that she didn’t know David as well as she would if she had the same… obstacle as him.

The thought made her head spin. Sarah, understanding the way Katherine and David felt as they watched couples walk through the city. Sarah, loving girls like Katherine did. Sarah, loving Katherine the way Katherine loved her.

Maybe it was better that she didn’t, because Katherine never wanted to hurt as badly as David did the night her world shifted and cracked even more.

She was sitting at home, writing in her room, when tapping at her window started, so loud she feared the window might break. She turned towards it, went to open it, and before she could even squint through the darkness of the night to see who it was, David fell into her arms.

She felt her heart plummet as David sobbed into her shoulder, and she held him close as he tried to gasp out words.

She didn’t need him to speak, though. She knew what had happened before he even told her.

“He’s gone,” he whispered against Katherine’s shoulder, his breaths shakier than a sapling in a winter storm. “He got on a train two hours ago.”

Katherine cared deeply about Jack, but in that moment, she hated him more than just about anyone else on Earth.

Jack was charismatic and bright and resourceful. He could have made it in New York, but instead, he left behind the person that Katherine knew loved him more than he loved the sun in the morning.

The worst part was, though, that she knew David wouldn’t be angry. He would try to be, but nothing in the world could make him genuinely angry at the almost-man who had found his way into David’s heart and ripped it apart when he left.

 

David never cried like that again.

 

Someone died a few months later. Katherine hadn’t known him well, but David had been friends with him, and she held his hand tightly as he closed his eyes and whispered under his breath, some prayer or curse to whoever was taking away the people they cared about.

Later that day, his jaw tightened.

“Marry me.”

She was taken aback. “What?”

“It’s the only way I can make sure I won’t lose you, too.”

She nodded slowly. “Alright.”

She couldn’t watch him fade away.

 

Her father accepted it quicker than she thought he would. It made sense, really. David was very far from rich, but he was intelligent, and with money backing him, he could be successful.

David’s parents couldn’t be happier. Katherine was polite, and beautiful, and rich, and while not exactly the kind of nice Jewish girl Esther and Mayer had been searching for, her family was, so they took it easily.

They got married in the same place Sarah and her husband had, and Katherine felt like she was touching a hot stove when she recalled that night.

Medda attended, and at the reception, she touched David’s arm, murmuring something in his ear that Katherine guessed was the closest anyone could to apologizing.

She pulled back and smiled softly at the two of them. “You two are good kids, alright? Visit any time you want.”

Somehow, that meant more than a million congratulations.

 

More people vanished and disappeared, and two appeared.

Sarah’s first two children, Anna and Gabriel, had every bit of Sarah’s fire and brilliance, and Katherine swore that she would do her best to make them as happy as possible.

“Anna?” Katherine overheard David asking Sarah, shortly after she decided on the name. “Isn’t it a bit common?”

“It’s hers,” Sarah said proudly, “and she’ll make it her own.”

 

Their lives went on. But as their lives went on, their lives got harder. Days where Katherine, haunted by nightmares, couldn’t sleep, grew more and more common. Days where David fell asleep at the dining room table, surrounded by an empty bottle of wine and torn pieces of paper left over from half-written letters, some to people he used to know, some to God. Most to Jack. All filled with curses and questions when Katherine read scrap after scrap, her eyes welling up with tears because David was hurting in some way indescribable except on paper and in screams.

They never discussed it. When Katherine tried not buying wine, it still ended up by his side on his worse nights. He was never cold, never cruel. Even in as bad a place as he was, David always seemed to have more kindness in him than most people ever had.

One night when they were taking care of Anna and Gabriel, Katherine heard Anna talking to David. Anna was usually more insightful than her brother, always catching on when people were sad and noticing things that most people couldn’t.

“Uncle Davey?” Anna said, her little four-year-old hands clutching at David’s. “Why aren’t you happy?”

He brushed her hair back, smiling carefully. “I  _ am  _ happy.”

“Then why are you sad?”

Katherine watched as David sighed. “Sometimes it’s a little hard to remember to be happy is all.”

 

Sarah had just turned twenty-one when she had Anna and Gabriel. When the two were six, she was pregnant again, and David genuinely laughed for the first time in a few months at the irony of it when Les pointed it out-- a twin with two siblings, her twin and her younger brother, having three children, twins and a younger child.

Les had been away for years, hundreds of miles away at university. By the time Sarah had gotten married, it was too late for David to go back to school-- two years of Mayer getting better, then worse had kept him out for too long. (Privately, Katherine thought that years of access to the Pulitzer library and writing anything he could for anything he could find had made David just about as smart as he could be, but she knew he had been disappointed.) But Les, with every bit of Jacobs spunk, had thrown himself back into being as good as he could be, spurred on by the same refusal to let his family down that anyone who knew Esther and Mayer had.

Mayer’s leg had never gotten better. They had thought it would, but he kept wavering between almost better and nearly worse.

They’d spoken to doctors and surgeons and people who said that he should leave it alone, people who said it should be amputated, people who said he didn’t have any time left.

A month after Sarah announced that she was pregnant again, what had been a reoccurring issue came back to bite them, stronger than before.

It wasn’t really his leg, the doctors thought. The injury, and the recent reopening when he thought he could go back to work, had made him more susceptible to infection, viruses, and disease, which came in full fury during the winter.

He was in the hospital for a week, and when Katherine went to visit him for the third time, she brought a book with her, in hopes that giving him something to focus on would help him take his mind off… everything.

She set it down and sat next to him. “I brought you something.”

He looked over. “Who by?”

“A French author. Victor Hugo. It’s… expansive.” She placed her hands in her lap while he took it and examined the cover, the spine. “How are you feeling?”

He gave her a dry look. “Same as yesterday.”

She could tell he felt worse, but she didn’t press. “David will be here later this evening, when he gets off work, and Sarah when I head home and can take her children.”

He smiled and put a weak hand on hers. “You are a lovely girl, Katherine.”

“No need for the finality,” she assured both of them. “You’ll heal.”

“And if not?”

“You will. You have to.”

Mayer chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Take care of my children.”

“I won’t need to. You can,” she said desperately.

 

Katherine looked up as David walked in numbly, setting down the same book Katherine had handed over just that morning.

“Davey?” Katherine asked hesitantly from the table, and David closed his eyes. Katherine walked forward and pulled him into a hug. She felt David’s slow breaths echo through her own body, and she pressed her head into his shoulder.

Two years later, her father would die. She would never mourn him the way she mourned Mayer Jacobs.

 

After that, Katherine had been sure that the worst was over. They had gone through enough, she promised David quietly as they sat in darkness one night. They had gone through enough, and they were allowed to stop hurting.

It was awful that they weren’t allowed happiness. But every time Katherine thought about it, her stomach churned when she remembered that they weren’t even allowed to be rid of the pain that had followed them for years.

They’d had no reason to worry about Sarah’s third child. The twins had been fine, she’d been fine, and they had no reason to think it wouldn’t be the same again.

“Katherine,” Sarah said softly, rubbing circles in her hand with one frail thumb. “Kathy, stop worrying.”

“Like that could happen,” David said, trying desperately for nonchalance. 

Katherine exhaled slowly, trying to portray confidence. “You’ll be fine.”

None of them mentioned the baby, born with its heart not beating and its body still. Thinking about it would mean having to mourn again.

They turned when they heard David’s name called, and Esther beckoned for him. He squeezed his sister’s hand and pressed kisses to both their foreheads before he left, whispering quickly to his mother. 

Sarah smiled softly at Katherine, and Katherine looked around, petrified of the cold surroundings that were a hospital. She hated it: the cold that was more feeling than temperature, the feeling that somewhere in the building, someone was losing something near to their heart.

Katherine didn’t want to die in a place like that. She didn't want to die in a place where her heart would be cold before her body ever was. She didn't want Sarah to die in a place like that. She didn't want Sarah to  _ die. _

She didn't realize she was crying until Sarah frowned, her pale lips turning down at the corners. “Katherine, please don't cry for me.”

“You think I can help it?” Katherine laughed, quickly moving close to hysterical. Sarah looked up at her with pleading eyes, and Katherine forced down the lump in her throat. “I’m so sorry, Sarah.” Her words came out like a whisper, completely broken.

“This isn’t your fault,” Sarah pressed, and Katherine shook her head.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

“What…” Sarah broke off to wince when pain clearly ran through her veins. “For what?”

Katherine tried to breathe through the hole that seemed to be carved in her lungs and the hands curling around her throat. “I love you.”

Sarah smiled oddly, like she had no idea why that was so hard to say. “I love you too, Kathy.”

“No, I…” Katherine swallowed hard. “I love you.”

A mix of warm sorrow and pity flashed in Sarah’s eyes. They sat in silence before Sarah filled it quietly. “It’s alright. I know.”

Katherine couldn't stop the tears from running down her face. 

“Thank you,” she said, and Sarah smiled softly.

Sarah eventually nodded off to sleep, and Katherine stayed by her side, running her finger over the lines of Sarah's palm. David eventually came back, sitting down next to Katherine, offering her a cup of water, and joining her in her silent observation of the slow rise and fall of Sarah’s chest.

Eventually, David yawned, and Katherine wrapped her arm around his shoulders as he eventually fell asleep. For a few hours, it stayed just like that, with the hustle and bustle of the hospital moving around them and the world around Katherine and the two people that she loved the most standing still.

She was about to drift off when she ran her thumb over Sarah’s wrist and went still. Frantically, she held her fingers where a pulse should have been, her own picking up when she didn't find anything. Frantically, she checked every point that a pulse could be felt at-- neck, forehead, wrist again, until she didn't know what else to do except break.

David woke up to the sound of her sobs, and she never quite forgot the way he paled when he realized that another person they loved had managed to slip between their fingers.

 

When they got home, Katherine collapsed, mere steps away from the doorway, and didn't move, sobs racking through her body for the third time that day. 

David didn't sob. He cried the way a broken person cries, quiet, still, just tears and grief and some kind of denial that the universe could be that cruel.

Neither of the left the house for days. They didn't go to work, or get food, or even collect their mail. They just shut down, sometimes never even moving, sometimes Katherine just tracing her fingers over her dresses’s seams and trying to push back the memories of Sarah that accompanied, while David sat in the kitchen and emptied bottles of wine.

Finally, they set foot outside for the funeral. They didn't speak, they didn't accept condolences. They just clung to the other’s hand and prayed that the worst would be over.

The day after the funeral, Esther knocked on their door. David had been checking on her, calling whenever he had the strength to move from their kitchen table, and she showed up without warning.

Esther Jacobs was stronger, Katherine thought, than anyone else Katherine knew. She had lost her husband and her daughter in a matter of months, and there she was, at their door, tired and tear-stained and barely standing, asking her children to come home.

“Please,” she said, squeezing David and Katherine’s hands. “Les has promised to come home from his college and finish his education here. Family needs to be together.”

One way or another, decisions were made. Les and Esther ended up moving into David and Katherine’s house, and they cobbled together a life of all of them working and grieving and Les going to school at night while Katherine and David and Esther all went about the house and tried to sleep and mourned in their own private ways.

Sarah had never written out how she wanted her things distributed, no matter how often people told her. Katherine, in the moment, had loved that about her, how Sarah had almost seemed immortal, living in a world where she didn’t have to care about death. 

But Sarah had been mortal, maybe more than all of them. So when the shield around her had fallen, and she had become just as real as the rest of them, they had been left with a puzzle of who she was to reveal what she would have wanted.

Sarah Jacobs left behind a grieving family, an apartment with things that reminded everyone too much of her, and two children. 

Two weeks after the funeral, her husband disappeared.

Esther told them, tears in her eyes, as Anna and Gabriel fell fast asleep in one of the spare beds, how she had taken them home after a day that their father said he wanted to visit Sarah’s grave, only to find an empty apartment.

Katherine had never seen David the way he was, that mix of a stray bolt of anger coming through the layers of sadness that had wrapped around his heart. But realizing that his sister had been used as a way to leave the two people that Sarah had dedicated her life to taking care of made him light on fire in a way she hadn’t seen before.

The next morning, when Anna came wandering down for breakfast, Katherine sent a hesitant look to where David was drinking coffee.

They had a job to do. 

 

Their house had become three times as full in a matter of weeks, and it felt like their lonely universe had finally expanded and become more than the two of them.

They worked out systems, of people taking the twins to school and going to work and having their own private time.

It was during the formation of that system that Katherine was truly relieved that she and David were married. Married couples, Esther told them, needed space and privacy ever so often to just be together.

And so, Sundays became Katherine and David’s day, when Esther took the twins out and Les went out with some of his friends. They spent each one of their Sundays in various ways, sometimes spending time together and trying to feel like their marriage was normal, sometimes writing side by side and reading what the other wrote as a first audience, sometimes visiting Sarah.

There were hard days, obviously. Days where Katherine remembered all that had happened and couldn't bring herself to leave the house, days where David couldn’t stop himself from a late-night bottle of wine, days where Esther’s strong exterior cracked and she cursed God for taking so much from them.

But they made it through. And Katherine finally stopped feeling like she’d lost some part of herself.

She had been Katherine Pulitzer, and she didn’t like that version of herself very much. Then she had been Katherine Plumber, and she liked that more. And finally, she was Katherine Jacobs. She had watched her world fall apart and piece itself back together, and she had made it through. Katherine Jacobs was stronger than Pulitzer and Plumber, and she had what the others didn't: people that she loved. She had a small little group that joined her against the world, and she couldn’t imagine losing them.

Actually, she could. Nightmares about Les, or Esther, or either Anna or Gabriel, or God forbid, David dying haunted her.

She could imagine it. She just didn’t want to.

 

Katherine knew that their lives would get more complicated the minute that they signed the papers saying that they were officially Anna and Gabriel’s guardians, she just didn’t expect how much so.

David tried to quit drinking, asking Katherine to be near him every night so he couldn’t sneak off to the dining room, not buying wine, anything to keep himself away. Still, he had weak nights. They all did. They just tried their best to take their broken parts and make a functioning whole for their niece and nephew.

She told him, one night as they tried to fall asleep like they did every night, that she thought it was tragic that Anna and Gabriel had to know death so soon.

David gave her an odd look. “When were you introduced to it?” he asked slowly, and Katherine strained to remember.

“I was thirteen. A family friend died.”

David shook his head slowly, almost unbelieving. She frowned. “Why, when were you?”

He sighed, seeming almost detached from the world around him. “I can’t remember.”

Katherine’s blood ran cold, because she knew what he meant. It hadn’t been so quiet that it was hard to recall. He didn’t remember because in David Jacobs’s world, it seemed like he had known death and poverty from the minute he was born.

“I’m sorry.”

The words hung all around them, and David smiled softly in her direction. “It’s alright. I’m alright.”

He would be, she realized that night.  They’d both be alright, because alright didn’t mean happy, or whole, or even functioning. It just meant alive, and that was what they were. Broken, and changed, and scarred in a way that hurt to the touch, but blissfully alive in the way that not everyone got.

 

Life was like fighting for Katherine and David Jacobs. They thought they’d made it through the worst, and then more would come, then more, then more, then more. After Sarah died, they’d thought it was over, that they could come together as a family and take care of Gabriel and Anna. And that point in their lives, the moment when they started to repair themselves, was more of a turning point than anything else.

The world struggled and went on, and so did they. There was so much left in the world that would happen before they were gone.

And yet, the world couldn’t resist one last, personal parting blow.

 

It was a rare day: not Sunday, but Esther had gone out with a few of her friends for the night and Les had taken Anna and Gabriel to one of their friend’s house. Katherine and David were both writing, Katherine scribbling out thoughts on a piece of paper and David at their typewriter.

(Their typewriter, Katherine always privately thought, was a thing of beauty, with its worn keys and battered edges from years of being jostled around and jammed and sworn at.)

They had both worked themselves into a kind of rhythm, words flowing freely, when there was a knock at the door.

David sat up, but Katherine got to the door first, and before she knew it was handing a package to David. 

“For you,” she said in a semi-joking formal tone, and David smiled, opening it without a second thought.

Katherine looked over his shoulder, and immediately frowned, confused. “You got… letters.”

David lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Evidence, probably. Something they want me to write about.” He picked up the largest, a newer envelope on top of the tied bunches that filled up the box.

Katherine Jacobs lost the woman she had loved for years, and she survived it, and so she survived everything else. Losing Sarah was like the parting blow she received before she was left behind, crumbling to the ground.

She felt the worst for David. He had to lose the man he loved twice.

 

_ Dear Mr. Jacobs, _

_ My name is Cynthia Kelly. I find it unfortunate that our first correspondence be the delivery of bad news, but sadly that is so. My husband, Jack Kelly, has spoken of you many times-- his memories of you seemed to be his most treasured from his past, although admittedly he did not speak much of many elements of it besides you. _

_ My husband passed away two months ago this August. I felt it only just to pass on to you, as it was clear he cared very much for you, and likely you him. _

_ Jack wrote you many letters while I knew him, but he never sent them. I've never been quite sure why, and I have never read them-- he always had a private place in his heart for his past, and I didn't think it right to intrude. I did, however, think it right that you read them. Jack told me, many times, that he regretted never saying goodbye. I thought that this could give his spirit some kind of closure. _

_ I hope this finds you in good health, and for all our sakes, that you will forgive my husband for whatever he has done. He was a good man, and I think forgiveness is what he deserves. _

_ God bless you. _

_ Regards,  _

_ Cynthia Kelly _

 

Katherine placed a hesitant hand on the small of David’s back as he reread the words. She watched, almost scared, as his gaze flitted across the middle of the page. 

He traced his finger over Jack’s name, as if it were the holiest and most dreadful word that mankind had to offer. Perhaps it was, to him. Maybe, in the same way that Katherine hated the articles she had written about the children that she had known years ago, the name of someone that you loved despite their leaving you became like a kind of curse imprinted into the most secret place in your heart.

David ran his finger along the gentle curve of the  _ J  _ and shook his head slowly.

“All I needed,” he said, “was just one letter. One  _ hey Davey, I’m alright.  _ Just one sign that he was alive.” His voice broke on the last word, and Katherine was reminded that the hardest part of loving someone was watching them hurt and not being able to do anything about it. 

David shook his head again, tears forming in his eyes. “He was too much of a coward to even say goodbye to me. His  _ wife,”  _ there was a painful crack on the word, like it made him doubt every word and kiss and ounce of feeling that Jack had ever shown to him. “His  _ wife  _ had to apologize for him.”

He dropped the letter to the ground, his fingers coming up to his lips in one last attempt to hold back sobs.

One last shake of his head, and he turned and fell right into Katherine’s arms.

He didn’t quite cry the way he had when Jack had first left. He just clung to Katherine like she was a lifeboat, and she tried her best to keep him afloat.

 

David was never really the same.

He was still everything that he had been. He was still kind, loving, and just as  _ good  _ as he had been for years. But all that, the kind and the good, was undercut by a sad sort of defeatedness.

Sad wasn't new. They all were sad, in a way. Even Anna, bright and cheery as she always was, was sad sometimes-- when she came home the first day after everything went wrong, realizing that she had to inform her classmates that she didn’t live with her mother and father like everyone else-- she had an aunt and two uncles and a grandmother, but no mother, no father. So sad wasn’t new, but they’d always been strong.

But with that package of letters that Katherine found, unopened, under their bed, David seemed to crumble under one last blow.

Katherine removed alcohol completely from their home, and did the best she could to never let David have a weak night, but even the best of people has nights where nothing feels like it matters.

Even on the darkest nights, David was never cold. He was always filled with love for his family, and for his friends.

Katherine was never really able to point out the exact evidence of David’s collapse. All she could really tell was that one day, he was alright, and the next, some part of him had been taken away and he had never been able to replace it.

 

And so, time went on and on. Anna and Gabriel started growing up, and they all survived. Times changed, bit by bit, and they watched from inside their own little bubble.

They were alright, but the rest of the world wasn’t.

It was terrifying, honestly, watching it all happen. David was called in to work suddenly, the publisher yelling over the phone that they had a story that could keep David paid for months.

Then Katherine was called in, only a few minutes later, and she rushed to the Sun office, pulling on her coat as she ran.

A world war, they told her. The United States had joined the war, and they would start drafting men any minute.

She came home after hours of listening to reports and jotting down whatever she knew. As soon as she walked into the dining room, she knew something had happened. David was talking to Anna in a low voice, and Esther was sitting quietly with Les and Gabriel, muttering under her breath.

It wasn’t silent, but it felt like the tiniest movement would have reverberated through the room. 

Instantly, she felt the blood drain to her feet. “God, no.”

Les sprang up. “No! No, not… not yet.”

All Katherine registered in her mind was a fierce blend of confusion and fear, and it must have shown on her face. Les stepped forward and took her hands.

“I haven’t been drafted. But I’m in the right age group, so I may be at some point.”

Katherine, caught between relief and dread, pulled him forward and hugged him tightly.  _ Please, God,  _ she thought to herself.  _ Please, God, don’t take him.  _

 

They didn’t. Men were drafted away by the thousands, and Lea was never taken. David wasn’t taken, even when the drafts started taking men his age. 

The closest they ever got was David receiving an offer to become a war correspondent, traveling across the ocean to write pieces that were barely more than fluff about the strength and resilience of their boys.

He turned it down immediately. He couldn’t do that to them, he told Katherine that night, kissing her forehead so faintly she doubted it really happened.

She worried less about their family and more about David. He was strong, she knew, but going into a war already broken was not strong, it was suicide.

Thank God he stayed.

 

It was torture to see a war take place every morning as she watched the papers being printed.

David whispered prayers under his breath every time they heard the headlines, and Katherine clutched his hand.

She and David were opposites in that way, she thought. Opposites in God. As the world grew worse, he thought more and more of God, clinging to whatever he had that could give him hope. And as shadows grew darker and the world became crueler, she lost faith, bit by bit.

She thanked God for the blessings that she had, but the more she did, the more it became a formality, a nicety. In a world where children lived on the streets and died sick and hungry, in a world where David, the best man she knew, wasn’t allowed to be happy, she had a hard time believing God was there.

 

The rest of their life was a strange mix of worry and relief. 

The war ended, and a few years later, Anna and Gabriel started their own lives. 

About two years after the war ended, the amendment that Sarah had spent her short life fighting for was passed.

Katherine went with Esther and Medda the first time they were able to vote. She walked with Medda through the park afterwards, talking quietly.

“Sarah would have loved this,” Katherine said, and Medda hummed.

“Poor girl would’ve been glad I could be here,” Medda said with a smile. “You know she quit the organization when they wouldn’t fight for my vote?” 

Katherine stopped abruptly. “No!”

Medda chuckled sadly. “She came back from one of the marches all in a huff, insisting votes for women meant votes for  _ all  _ women.” She sighed. “She was a real special girl, wasn’t she?”

“One of the best.”

 

Anna and Gabriel moved out not too long afterwards, both heading off to college.

Katherine almost struggled to compute it in her brain: two people that she had raised, and that were children seemingly minutes ago, had their own lives, and they didn’t need her. 

She turned to David as they watched Anna walk away. “Is this what it feels like to be old?”

He laughed, putting his arm around her waist. “I think there’s a few years left of us not being elderly.”

Katherine winced. “That’s an old sentence.”

David rolled his eyes, and it was then that Katherine realized that they might have been a little more than alright again.

 

The twenties were strange for them.

Barely a year into the decade, Esther died. Somehow, it hurt less than all the losses before.

“Don’t you dare cry,” she told David as tears rolled down his cheeks. “I am an old woman, and I have lived long enough.”

He kissed her forehead, and she squeezed both of their hands with what strength was left in her.

“Take care of each other.”

They both nodded, and her eyes fluttered shut, one last smile gracing her lips.

Esther Jacobs outlived her husband and her daughter, and learned a second language, and lived through more than she should have had to, but she still died smiling.

She truly was the strongest woman Katherine knew. 

  
  


They watched as the world turned around them into a stranger place. 

They didn’t partake much in it-- they wrote, they talked, but not much with anybody but the other, and they went about their days as they always had.

Around them, though, times changed, and quickly.

Dresses changed, and so rapidly that Katherine gave up trying to keep with the times. Societal rules changed, and so drastically that she caught David wishing that the two of them could have been younger, just to get a taste of what it was like to be able to do near anything you wanted.

The world changed, and she couldn’t stop herself from hoping, desperately, that Anna and Gabriel would live long enough to see a world where things weren’t just better, but good.

The twenties were next to insane-- inventions, new rules, new laws, laws vanishing before their eyes, conflicts brewing in Europe, the stock market going insane…

And then it crashed, and that was the last straw.

They withdrew their money, packed their things, and moved out to where one of their last remaining friends from their youth lived, out in a small town.

And they waited it out, with a garden and a cat to take care of the mice.

They were as close to happy as one could get when the world seemed to be falling apart. They were withdrawn from the fuss of New York City, rarely even using money unless they needed something they truly couldn’t get their hands on without it.

Rafaela and her husband had a farm, nothing much, but a few cows and a henhouse and pigs. They ran it mainly on their own, more self-sufficient than nearly anyone Katherine knew. They were always there if Katherine and David needed milk or eggs, and they always received carrots or lettuce or tomatoes in return.

They were as close to happy as they could get, and Katherine was thankful for that.

But even as close as they were, there still seemed to be a part of David always missing.

Jack had already been carved out of his heart, but once New York was taken, it seemed to finish him off. Everything in New York had a memory for him: the awful tenement building he had lived in as a child, with its rats and bed that he shared with Les and Sarah, the alleyways marked in his heart by Kissing Jack Kelly, the markets and streets and cobblestones. He told Katherine about each one at night, and she almost wished she could wipe them away, and let him start over.

It was no use, though. New York was a part of David, the same way his family was, the same way Jack was. Trying to erase it from his would be like tearing out his heart and mind and soul.

 

Halfway through the thirties, David started wasting away.

Part of it was just growing older, but Katherine knew in her heart that he’d just been hurting too long. Hearts can only take so much before the bodies they support start to give in. He was fifty-three, which Katherine privately thought wasn’t old enough for someone as good as David to have to worry about leaving everything in order. But it was longer than most got, and she was thankful.

They didn’t read the paper, really. It hurt too much, for both of them, to see a paper that they would no longer write headlines for, and it hurt too much to see an injustice and not be able to speak up.

When Katherine told Rafaela that, her friend just sighed.

“You’ve done more than enough. You and Davey were out there for a long time, just life out your last years without a fuss.”

It didn’t feel right, but they went about their day. The world moved, and they moved, but not together. They just lived as best they could, and made do with what happiness they had.

 

In 1937, David fell ill, quickly and without much warning. It wasn’t painful, he assured her day after day. And she was glad for that, but every night she fell asleep with tears on her pillow, cursing that fact that she couldn’t go first, that she had to watch him die.

God, it was the worst sort of thing, losing the person who got you through losing everyone else.

One night, when she was searching through their things, looking for something or another that was far less important than what she found, she came across an envelope, David’s unmistakable handwriting addressing it to Jack Kelly. No address or stamp, just the swoop of the letters and the emptiness of the rest of the blank space.

Katherine thought at first to put it away, but it was open, and she couldn’t resist herself.

 

_ Jack, _

_ The least you could have done is let me stop loving you. _

_ Yours. _

 

There was no name afterwards, possibly an attempt to conceal the identity of the writer in case anyone besides Katherine ever found it. But anyone who knew him would recognize his handwriting, and that was what broke Katherine’s heart.

He never had to add his name, because David Jacobs was always Jack’s. No matter how hard he tried to resist it, no matter how much he wished he could rip his heart out instead of love him, he was Jack’s, even when Jack wasn’t his.

Katherine’s heart ached for him, and it was almost like she wasn’t controlling herself, not consciously, when she rooted the package out of their stored things.

She heard a throat cleared behind her, and she turned.

“You should be in bed,” she said, standing up to take his arm, and David rolled his eyes.

“Stop fussing, I’m fine.” He broke off into a coughing fit, and when it ended, Katherine frowned at him. He made a little  _ humph,  _ covering her hand with his. “Comparatively.”

“Come on, we’ll both lie down. It’s late, I need some rest.” 

David smiled at her, and then his gaze drifted down, and his smile melted away. “What were you doing with that?” She followed his eyes down to the package.

“Davey…” she trailed off when he shook his head, gripping her hand so hard her fingers nearly hurt.

“No. No, no.”

“David, this is all you have of him. Shouldn’t you at least read them?”

“Katherine,” he said, breaking off to cough once, and his eyes softened. “I do not want to spend the last bit of my life thinking of a man I wish I could leave behind.”

They always understood each other, in the way that Katherine wasn’t sure many other people ever had with someone, but in that moment, she could feel every moment of David’s longing that he could have had something different. That was really what it was to love someone, she thought. Feeling what they did until you weren’t sure where your grief ended and theirs began.

“Alright,” she said, and that was that.

 

The day David died, it was sunny outside. The little part of the year when Spring was opening its doors to May flowers was shining through, and Katherine hated it.

It wasn’t what a day like that deserved. She should have looked up from his closed eyes and out the window to see clouds and rain and a rising moon, not the sun shining brightly and a sky so gorgeously blue that it made her want to fly into it and never, ever have to touch the ground again, not when David wasn’t on Earth.

 

She loved him. Not the way she loved Sarah, but more than she had ever loved anyone. 

She loved him so much it felt like living without him wasn’t living, and she blinked, and he was gone.

 

He was buried in New York, near Sarah.

Even Horace Greeley went back to New York, she thought to herself as she looked at the graves. David Jacobs was a puzzle made of mismatched pieces, and New York was the piece that fit the whole thing together.

She mustered up a faint smile for the two of them and walked away to where Rafaela was waiting.

The world kept moving.

 

A week after it happened, she finally opened the rest of the letters.

She’d never really made peace with Jack; second-hand forgiveness was an odd thing. If David had given up, then was she to? She didn’t think so, and so she sorted through them, placing them in order of date before she finally read them.

Most of them were incomplete, just fragments or sentences. Her heart dropped to her stomach as she read, and after only three, she felt like she might be sick, but she pressed on.

 

~~_Davey_ _David_~~

_ What do I call you? _

 

_ I met a real nice girl down here. All smart, like _

 

_ More plants than I thought here. _

 

_ Do you love me? _

 

_ Cynthia said to send some of these _

 

_ I love you. _

 

_ Cynthia’s mad about making my writing good. _

 

_ Why didn’t I take you with me? _

 

_ I love you. More than you know. _

 

_ I’ll never send this. _

 

_ Cynthia isn’t y _

 

Katherine, not even aware of the tears falling down her face, gently touched the fading  _ y.  _

There were so many more letters that she never touched. She just repackaged the box and squeezed her eyes shut until her tears went away.

She thought, a few times, of setting a few on David’s grave, but she knew the danger was too great. It just hurt to know that he’d never be able to see them, to realize that maybe, maybe Jack had missed him, loved him, like David had loved Jack.

 

“You love her,” Rafaela said one day after they visited Sarah and David’s graves together. They were sitting in Katherine’s living room, watching the rain fall outside, and Katherine sighed.

“Is it really that obvious?”

Rafaela smiled at her, not happy but instead reassuring. “To someone who really looks.”

Katherine hummed, and they were both silent for a while before Rafaela spoke again.

“I…” She stopped, biting her bottom lip, and Katherine understood.

“Who?”

“Hildy.”

Katherine looked down at her hands where they were folded in her lap. “I wish I’d known.”

“Why?”

“It’s just easier. To know someone’s the same.”

Rafaela nodded, more to herself than Katherine, and they sat in silence together, watching the world move around them.

 

Katherine Jacobs died in her sleep. No one knew why, and she wouldn’t have cared why. To her, it was just ending.

It wasn’t painful, it was just falling asleep and not waking up.

It was only a little more than a year after David died, and that was perhaps the way things should have been.

If it had been up to her, they would have died in the same moment, just so that there wouldn’t have to be a world where either of them had to be alone.

 

Katherine Jacobs was a puzzle of mismatched pieces, but the piece that held it together was love-- irreplaceable, heartbreaking love.

 

_ everyone's queen: I had the dream again _

_ the royal seamstress: i go on one family vacation _

_ the royal seamstress: and u turn into some kind of fantasy heroine??? _

 

It was hotter than Katherine could ever remember it being, and she was sure she was melting.

She rubbed away the sweat on her forehead and watched as a drop of water trailed down the outside of her glass, the ice melting away by the second. She really needed to write herself a reminder: perfect libraries jobs always have catches, like no air conditioning.

After just about the fiftieth time scanning the library, hoping someone would be walking in, coming to check something out, anything to give her something to do, she opened up her book and started to read, paying little attention to the words, and instead on how nice it felt to use her Yale pamphlet as a fan and get the tiniest bit of a breeze.

Admittedly, when her teacher had offered her the pamphlet, she meant it to be something serious, not a fan. But Katherine was in serious need of some fresh air, so Yale would have to wait until senior year actually started.

She closed her eyes, telling herself that she was just resting them, until she realized that it felt much nicer to have her eyes closed. So she let herself drift off to sleep, giving in to dreams.

Her dreams were never scenes, just snippets:

_ A boy with dark skin and messy hair saying, “The moon’s bigger there, you know.” _

_ A gorgeous woman with dark hair pressing a feather-light kiss to Katherine’s forehead and vanishing into the dark. _

_ A garden and a cat. _

_ A boy with curly hair and soft hazel eyes, over and over again. In tears, kissing Katherine on the cheek, kissing the messy-haired boy fiercely, laughing, reading a book, frowning as he hunched over a typewriter. _

“Excuse me?”

Katherine woke up with a start to see a tall stack of books in front of her. She groaned and swiped at her eyes quickly before she sat up straight.

“Yeah, of course, I’m so sorry, just let me…” She turned on the computer and reached for the person’s library card. “Card, please?”

“Here.” She scanned it, and then gave it back, looking up to the person’s face.

The world stopped moving.

“Davey?”

**Author's Note:**

> WOW this fic took a long time to write. holy shit.  
> and i finally wrote canon era!!! enjoy it while you can because it kicked my ass ill probably never do it again... modern lets them actually be happy  
> for reference, this was me slowly chipping away at this since april. so im TIRED.  
> so naturally, im jumping right into my next fic. im a sucker for pain.  
> leave me a comment if youre feeling generous, or come chat with me on tumblr @penzyroamin!! have a great day, thank you for reading!


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